David Vitter fights for formaldehyde

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Sen. David Vitter (R-La.) has been raising objections with the EPA on behalf of the formaldehyde industry.
Reuters

But Vitter continued pressuring EPA for more review.

On Sept. 23, he confirmed to reporters that he had placed a hold on the nomination of Paul Anastas, the Obama administration’s choice to head EPA’s Office of Research and Development. He said he wouldn’t release the hold until EPA agreed to send the formaldehyde assessment to the National Academy.

To smooth the way for that review, he tried to add an amendment to an EPA appropriations bill mandating that the agency set aside $1 million for a National Academy review. Grizzle, the Formaldehyde Council lobbyist, worked to get support for the amendment, according to one of his lobbying disclosure forms. The amendment wasn’t included in the final bill.

On Sept. 24, Jackson, the EPA administrator, met with Vitter and offered a compromise: She would ask the National Academy for its advice on the formaldehyde assessment.

That same day, an EPA spokeswoman told the New Orleans Times-Picayune that the chemical didn’t need more review and that the EPA was ready to begin finalizing its assessment. “This is not the time for more delay,” EPA spokeswoman Adora Andy said.

But Vitter wouldn’t budge. Meanwhile, his campaign picked up more industry contributions.

In November, a political action committee created by the American Chemistry Council, whose members include formaldehyde producers Hexion Specialty Chemicals and DuPont, gave Vitter’s campaign a $2,500 contribution, in addition to $1,500 it had given earlier in the year. On Dec. 2, Koch Industries, owner of Georgia Pacific and a major formaldehyde manufacturer, gave Vitter’s political action committee a check for $5,000. On Dec. 7, Grizzle gave Vitter $200. On Dec. 17, the Society of the Plastics Industry, which represents formaldehyde manufacturers BASF and DuPont, hosted a fundraiser for Vitter at its headquarters, recommending donations of a $1,000 per person.

Finally, Vitter got what he wanted. On Dec. 23, Jackson agreed to send the study to the National Academy. But in a letter Jackson sent to the Formaldehyde Council that day, she indicated it would not be the exhaustive study the industry had pushed for but would instead be done under a “compressed time frame.”

Peter Preuss, who heads EPA’s chemical risk-assessment program, said it would most likely be completed in a year.

Last month, the National Academy began gathering public comments about the 13 scientists it has selected for the formaldehyde panel. The Natural Resources Defense Council, an environmental advocacy group, has already written a letter raising questions about two of the candidates.

One worked for the Hamner Institute, an industry-supported laboratory that lists the Formaldehyde Council as one of its sponsors. The other worked for more than a decade at Dow Chemical, which is a member of the Formaldehyde Council and has contributed to Vitter’s campaigns.

On March 24, Grizzle, the Formaldehyde Council lobbyist, co-hosted a fundraiser for Vitter at the Capitol Hill Club, an exclusive Republican gathering place. The suggested donation was $1,000 per person.

ProPublica is an independent, nonprofit newsroom that produces investigative journalism in the public interest.

The effects of formaldehyde are not an abstract problem in Louisiana, where thousands of Hurricane Katrina victims claim they suffered respiratory problems after being housed in government trailers contaminated with the chemical.

Vitter is spitting in the face of constituents. Lets pour a bottle of formaldehyde into Vitter's diapers and see what happens.

Vitter is a man of unquestionable integrity, seeking only the scientific truth concerning the link between formaldehyde and cancer. NOT! Vitter is like the women he rents, a prostitute willing to do whatever nasty thing the highest bidder wants him to do. Will tea partiers join other voters in rising up and throwing the bum out of office? Inquiring minds want to know.

I feel like I am taking crazy pills, I remember growing up in the 80's when the EPA was somewhat toothless. Over the last few years the EPA has become gumless. I am not a huge fan of government regulation, but how can this even be a discussion? Does anyone think this chemical is safe, unless you want to preserve a dead specimen in a jar? Didn't people get sick by the hundreds after Katrina in FEMA trailers? I don't know, I suppose self preservation in politics trumps all else.

So formaldehyde, which they use to preserve dead things, has the potential to kill people. LOL. The EPA is on to something. CO2, which plants need to live, is a known risk (for who)? What in the hell do these idiots at the EPA think they are proving? Can't wait for them to try and regulate methane, which comes out of people...

Current theories of cancer focus on sequential mutations as a cause of the disease. Formaldehyde reacts chemically with DNA and is thus a very possible mutagen (something that causes mutations). It is also volatile and thus easily enters the body via the airway and lungs. How Vitter could work on behalf of industry rather than protect his constituents is despicable. Surely there are ways to serve both economic and human concerns. He should find them.

In addition to using valuable farmland unecessarily, requiring more energy to produce than it is worth, costing tens of billions in taxes to support and causing poorer gas mileage; ethanol also creates formaldehyde as a by-product endangering people who live near the factories that produce it.

In order to greatly curtail the emission of this potential carcinogen these plants should be shut down. They serve no useful purposes for ethanol and biofuels except as pork for the farm lobby. It would be a good start to shut them down. It would not require the EPA or even legislation except to stop the subsidies. Democrats still control both houses of congress and the presidency and have not proposed any legislation to identify this chemical as dangerous, instead in a gigantic leap of idiocracy they declare life giving carbon dioxide a pollutant. Liberals quick to blame republicans suffer from responsibility amnesia and party specific outrage.